November 2021 – Notes from Bambi

Inside out

Dear Benedict

You’ll not be familiar with social media, a way to chat with people world wide at the click of a button without meeting them. It receives a mixed press these days but I do it, although I only use the one account in one form. This morning it was revealed to me by one of my correspondents that they have two different accounts. It made me smile.

I love my Twitter correspondent who has helped me a great deal, but we’ve never met. Such are the ways of much social media. If I was surprised at the alter ego they had also adopted then I know better than to comment but it did give me cause to think about chapter 67 of your Rule.

A few years ago bought an old campervan called Bambi. Aged 34 she has travelled 57,000 miles in her lifetime. I rededicated her as the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica and took her on my Lay Benedictine travels. Yet chapter 67 is all about not going out.

Well that’s the main difference between monastics and Lay Benedictines. Being a Lay Benedictine you live inside out. I suspect there are many out there who don’t know they know a Lay Benedictine, a bit like having two social media accounts. And I’d have to say that it’s usually Bambi who attracts more attention rather than ‘What’s a Lay Benedictine?’

A Lay Benedictine is an enthusiast who would like to introduce more people to the inside-out life. Those who use social media often use it as a platform to share their views on life the universe and everything. There’s Anglican Twitter (I follow a few though I’m no Anglican) and Fungi Twitter (I’ve learnt a lot from them too). But most people just want to admire my van.

Perhaps this is why you didn’t want your monastics talking about what happened outside. You thought they’d be attracted to the outside life again. Me, I can’t get enough of it. Partly because I think it’s the life for me. I don’t mean night clubs and stuff, of motor shows, or concerts. All very nice in their way I’m sure. I mean the slow old routes from county to county, joining up the dots across Britain, where I am distracted by trees, fungi and other wild things.

So if you see an old Bambi out on the road, remember to give us a toot! We’ll be trying to live the inside-out life somewhere in Britain. Meanwhile we might meet on social media.

A traditional prayer: May the road rise to meet you.

From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict. @Bambigoesforth

Just care

Dear Benedict

Many tasks may seem impossible. We size them up, we decide they are not for us. It is true that I couldn’t have walked the End to End in 2019 without taking the first step. Indeed I was wary, and thought I might not be able to do it. But I had Bob, my husband, who had done it in 2003, to pace me from time to time when my steps were flagging. It took me 117 days but I did it.

In chapter 68 you write about impossible tasks. You seem to suggest you had a community of whingers who were forever saying ‘I can’t do that’, although I suspect you didn’t. As I look around me there are many tasks that look impossible but even the most unlikely folks embark on them. The end of Cop26 just a week ago indicates how impossible some tasks seem and how determined so many are to take on the challenges that are required.

The first function of leadership must be to act justly which in turn leads to the second function which is to just care. I’ve put the word ‘justly’ and ‘just’ in here on purpose. An unjust leader is not fit for leadership and care that is not just care is not proper care. Unfortunately we are currently surrounded by examples of the two, including amongst faith communities.

We seem to have forgotten that others will know Christ through our actions. If our communities do not run along just lines then others will turn their backs and leave us to it. So first and foremost the tasks must be assigned justly and then supervised by just care. Just as bullying is not just care so neither is an absence of care or no supervision.

Banner from the Christian Arts Festival 2021 at Nature in Art, Gloucestershire.

At the moment some of our most vital communities face a mountain of impossible tasks. I’m thinking particularly of the NHS and social care. Whilst it is good to encourage and support the marathon efforts of workers it is not good to ignore unjust leadership demanding burnout and low pay on the back of these workers whilst they line their own comfortable pockets. Impossible tasks require leaders with humility, insight and integrity just as much as they require willing workers. Have we forgotten what just leadership looks like?

From my remembered bible: Where love is, God is there.

May I live justly. May I just care.

From A friend of Scholastica and a member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

Remember

Dear Benedict

We’re at that time of year we keep for Remembrance. It something that, having started up about 100 years ago, has gathered pace recently. I called today’s correspondence Remember because there’s a lot of that in your Rule. Of course you can turn to the text as often as you like if it’s accessible but memory also plays a part in living by the Rule. There are some bits I remember better than others, that see sort of foundational, like the beginning. Working backwards is harder as I don’t always get to the end.

Just one of thousands of names remembered on the Menin Gate at Ypres

Which brings me to a few thoughts about chapter 69 and not defending other community members.

Like others following the Rule today I find myself looking at the commentaries and reflections published by those doing their following in different circumstances to me. Some are helpful, some less so. On the whole what I find unhelpful is a sort of detached ‘suck it up’ instruction. ‘Get on with it’ is not a very good encouragement to keep going in community if it seems difficult. Yes, I accept that hardship and challenge have their place in developing resilence in adult life. But so does justice and if I might be so bold as to say so, I find you a bit light on that, and some of your more recent followers seem like that too.

Perhaps you have all lived in ‘good enough’ communities. Maybe no one abused their power and everyone got on as well as they might. Goodness flowed and mental, psychological and spiritual health were available in abundance. I suspect that’s somewhat niave especially when interpreting chapter 69.

‘Don’t get caught up in the conflicts of others’ we are cautioned by one commentator. Well here I am again failing at living the Rule of St Benedict, me and many others too, if that really is what you meant.

At a Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh in 2005

For the last 20 days an ordinary man has been on hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in London, silently and with as much dignity as possible, asking for his wife, being held hostage in another country for over 6 years, might come home. I’m not related to him. He’s not a member of my family. I don’t live near him. I’ve never met him. But I have writen to him several times and I am caught up in his unjust situation.

He’s just one of several examples I could point to. A number of my former colleagues still contact me to discuss the injustices they experience, bullying and other forms of power abuse, in their ministries, often because there are unjust silences held over such issues. Don’t talk about it. Endure. These are not healthy messages.

But it’s not clear that chapter 69 recognises this. One commentator tells us that life is not perfect. Indeed it is not. But it is one thing for life not to be perfect and quite another to stand by and see others destroyed by the abuse of power in communities.

As I write this COP26 in Glasgow is nearly running on empty, as one rewrite after another waters down the language of change that is required to really tackle climate change. This is a global abuse of power. Once again the most vulnerable loose out. Are you really saying in Chapter 69 that I shouldn’t take sides in any of this.

For me that’s a direct contradiction to the gospel where Jesus encourages his followers to side with the vulnerable and marginalised. Why would we not do that? Why be bystanders when we could make a difference for justice?

I’m not planning to escalate a community conflict but neither would I be willing to stand by and see injustice go unchecked. In my remembered bible, there’s a story about a widow and an unjust judge. The widow keeps pleading and the judge keeps ignoring her. Yes, she seems strong, but the judge in the story really is a sod! Jesus makes it quite clear that God is not like the judge and by extension we should not be either. But equally we should not just stand by and see the widows or similar in our communities just take it because it will make them stronger. I shudder at that thought. It is when the churches have been silent on issues of justice, particularly those within their own communities that they have failed in their gospel witness.

Remembrance bring us face to face with the outcomes of the escalation of global conflict, and urges us towards peace. But peace and justice have to go hand in hand. In the psalms I remember they even kiss.

One hundred years later in a small cemetery in northern France

I hope I won’t be violent in community, but I also hope I’ll not be standing by while power is abused and people are damaged. Chapter 69 and some commentaries on it may need a rewrite.

From my remembered bible: Justice and peace join hands

Help me to remember and to live justly.

From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

Wrong!

Dear Benedict

In chapter 70 of your Rule you write about physical violence between monastics. Clearly not something to condone, you complete the chapter with the quotation: ‘Never do to another what you do not want done to yourself’.

I’m not sure what size your community was or how many monastics gathered together in a community following your Rule in general through the ages. Some reports suggest early communities of about a dozen, but later ones rather bigger. Probably it varied and probably the interpersonal dynamics couldn’t necessarily be predicted either. But essentially your Rule on this is for a community gathered in one limited place under a leader. In our time it’s common to speak of the global community. For this fortnight the world is attempting to gather as a community in Glasgow for COP26, a very different sort of community, but it is this one I am thinking of when I read chapter 70 this week.

Team Lees-Warwicker crossing the border in 2012, on Hannah’s End to End.

You were concerned about the way monastics treated each other. To make community work, physical violence needed to be contained. To back up this part of the Rule you used the quote I mentioned. But in our world we are constantly behaving like this, especially in respect of climate change. None of us wants an uninhabitable earth but we all contribute to the warming of the planet, thereby inflicting harm on each other: like a slap in the face.

It’s a difficult subject because it requires insight and self reflection; not something we all welcome. Those who say ‘I used reusable milk bottles when I was a child so it’s not me’ may genuinely believe that they are faultless when it come to contributing the carbon emissions. Unfortunately each of us belongs to a bigger community and through our shared membership we are inheritors of its history for carbon emissions and other planet warming activities. I may not take long haul flights every week but I still have a part in my country’s carbon footprint. My personal commitment to reuse and recycle is important but we also have collective responsibilities.

Janetstown in Caithness 2019: the whole world in not ‘mine’

Most people think they try to be kind or helpful to others. It is rarely enough. The Rule is not about some bland inoffensiveness that will get us all through life. It’s about a positive choice to live with others and see them thrive. And as far as climate change is concerned it is not enough to smile and suck our reusable straw. We must work on what it means to not do to another, country or continent, what we do not want done to ours. Rising sea levels: no thanks. Not for my island home or yours.

Our shared sense of community needs to get bigger and bigger.

From the remembered bible: Love one another.

Enlarge my understand that I may act justly.

From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay community of St Benedict.

PS: The blue trousers have walked many miles, including taking part in at least 2 End to Ends.